“…it seems that most of this “busy-ness” of the anti-smoking campaign is a complete flip of what was socially acceptable a few years back. Then, I would fill out a slip and have my liquor handed to me from behind a counter in a discreet paper bag. Now I can just go to the nearest upscale LCBO, take my kids with me and let them run amok amongst the rows of artfully displayed bottles, while I read a glossy magazine that explains how to further indulge my tastes and graciously entertain my friends.“

Cyd is obviously old enough to remember the dark, dreary days when Ontario viewed alcohol as worse than tobacco, and anyone desperate enough to enter a government booze outlet was treated like some sad, broken creature from skid row.

Ontario’s government-owned liquor monopoly operated bleak little dispensaries that had all the allure of an all-night pharmacy. No actual booze was allowed to be displayed, for fear the merest glimpse might turn solid citizens into a blubbering mass of addiction. You elbowed your way up to utilitarian counters with display boards that listed the limited products deemed acceptable for purchase. Using stubby little pencils, you scribbled down the name and code of the offending brand, then stood in line with similarly sad-sack individuals and handed your little list to a disapproving civil servant, who sent someone off to fetch your bottle and wrap it in a brown paper bag so as not to alarm any passing school marms or Sunday school teachers.

That was before the Ontario government realized just what a gold mine it had on its hands, and began redesigning liquor stores to serve as candy stores for grown-ups. Now there are free samples when you enter, kitchens to pass on recipes that encourage you to eat your booze as well as drink it, snob sections for high-priced wines and whiskies, and aisles full of expensive imported brews and hard-to-obtain craft beers, for people who only drink beer but want to feel just as snooty as everyone else.

The whole point is to get people to drink more, so the “dividend” the LCBO sends the government each year will grow and grow.

was $1.4 billion, the 16th record year in a row, on top of $874 million in taxes, import duties and other payments. So, $2.2 billion, which is a lot, even for a bunch of big-spending fools like the current Ontario government.

Meanwhile, anyone desperate enough to buy a pack of cigarettes has been reduced to the status of those sorry, forlorn customers who used to slip into LCBOs hoping not to be recognized. The latest government regulations will increase the size of the warning labels and the sheer gore of the illustrations. To catch a glimpse of the rotting teeth and ulcerated organs you have to ask someone to fetch you a pack from the nondescript, unlabelled shelves behind the counter, where they used to keep the dirty magazines before we started getting our porn free online. Fierce competition and viticultural advances have relentlessly pushed down the price of booze so that wholly acceptable products are available at ever more reasonable prices; tobacco prices, meanwhile, are so prohibitive they’ve spawned a cross-border smuggling trade that would have impressed Al Capone.

So what’s the message here? Obviously, for all its pious warnings about drinking responsibly and staying away from the wheel of the car, the government loves booze and wants people to buy more and more. The LCBO is hoping to increase sales by a billion dollars, to $5.3 billion by 2012-13. Cigarettes, however, are treated like a recipe for instant leprosy and smokers berated, belittled and humiliated at every opportunity. Of course, smoking won’t go away, just like drinking didn’t stop during prohibition. But it makes the government feel perversely good about itself to hound smokers while encouraging drinkers.